What Happens In Vegas

Cast: Cameron Diaz, Ashton Kutcher, Rob Corddry, Lake Bell, Jason Sudeikis
Director: Tom Vaughan
Producers: Michael Aguilar, Dean Georgaris, Shawn Levi
Screenwriter: Dana Foz
Music: Christophe Beck
Editor: Matt Friedman
Genre: Comedy/ Romance
Cinematography: Matthew F. Leonetti
Distributor: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
Location: New York, USA
Running Time: 99 min.

Technical Assessment: 2.5
Moral Assessment: 2.5
CINEMA Rating: For viewers age 13 and below with parental guidance

Jack Fuller (Ashton Kutcher) is a first class bum who can’t even keep a job at his own father’s company. He’s also a commitment-phobe, and a party animal who likes being around attractive, unattached women. After being fired by his own father, Jack packs off to Vegas with his best friend Hater (Rob Corddry). Joy McNally (Cameron Diaz), a Wall Street whiz kid, is dumped by her fiancé, and decides to drown out her sorrows in Vegas, dragging along her gal pal Tipper (Lake Bell). Jack and Joy literally bump into each other in—of all places a hotel suite: the Front Desk clerk apparently mistakenly gave them the key to the same room. Since both are trying to escape being dumped, Jack and Joy soon get drunk, and while very very drunk, get married Vegas style. They of course regret it the morning after, and vow to make life miserable for each other getting a divorce, until one quirky twist of fate—or the slot machine—gets them fighting tooth and nail over how to split the three million dollar jackpot.

About the first 45 minutes feels like a not-so-funny TV sit-com, and as far as romantic comedies go, What Happens in Vegas offers nothing really that novel. For that length of time the acting matches the script and the screenplay, and though Diaz is always pleasing to the eye, somehow the viewer gets the feeling this role is so “beneath her”. Rom-coms are not really that great nor are they expected to be, as far as depicting reality goes, but in What Happens in Vegas, the protagonists even come across as one- dimensional caricatures drawn by a writer and moved by a director who’d try anything to make people laugh. (Example: there’s a character named Richard Banger. “Oh, Dick Banger, ha ha ha,” says Jack. Dick Banger retaliates, “And you are Jack off!” The viewers will probably laugh, for a while, and then forget. Things change midway and get more real when Kutcher and Diaz succeed in getting the viewer to care about their characters as people—when Jack and Joy fall in love, that is. But even with that, it’s not likely you’ll want to keep this movie in your DVD list of “must-watch-over-and-over-again.”

The one shining lesson for viewers in What Happens in Vegas recalls an old Filipino adage about marriage not being like eating rice that you could just spit out when your mouth can’t stand the heat. It’s trying to say something, too, about money not being the most important thing on earth, although it’s glossed over by trivialities—and the amount of footage devoted to fighting over it. Okay, okay, romantic comedies aim to make you laugh, not to make you think. Fine, so just read between the lines and draw your own conclusions.